


Megs' Dragon Age Ficlets

by MegMayhem



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Inquisitors as Companions, Multi, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 21:44:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5021596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegMayhem/pseuds/MegMayhem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One shots, and ficlets featuring various characters and inquisitors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something Borrowed

Cullen and Maeve lay together, mostly silent and tangled in the sheets of his bed. He could somehow hear her breathing and her heartbeat over the scattered sounds of celebration, but Cullen still wasn’t sure that this was not a dream.

He often dreamt of her, so the notion was always a possibility, and when he was not asleep, she was constantly the figment of his hallucinations. When the pain of his Lyrium withdrawal pushed his mind to the breaking point, his thoughts sought out the one good thing among them.

 _Her_.

Experience would have him believing that she would not come back to him. If the pain was his punishment for Kinloch, and for Kirkwall, and all the other things he had failed to protect, then what was she his reward for?

⌘

_“Now, remember, I am only letting you borrow this,” he told her, lifting the coin she wore around her neck and running his thumb across the face of it. He tried to sound stern – confident, even, but the words kept getting stuck in his throat. “That means you have to bring it back.”_

_A warning. A request. A plea._

You _have to come back._

_Maeve looked down at the coin, and then back up to Cullen. “I promise,” she replied. She smiled, but there was no joy in it, but she tried. For him._

_For everyone._

_He dropped the token and they both watched it fall against her cuirass, silent in comparison to the cacophony that surrounded them. Corypheus, in all his madness, loomed overhead. Soldiers and citizens clambered around them; there were voices chanting war cries, and metal swords scraping shields. Every second they spent like this was dangerous, but he needed this._

_He needed her._

_Cullen took Maeve’s face in his hands, thumbs brushing over the hollows beneath her eyes, and crushed his mouth against hers. He tasted the salt of tears he had yet to shed._

_And then he sent his love off to war._  
  


⌘

“Cullen,” Maeve said softly, and her voice was the melody of his favorite song, filling his head and pushing away the unpleasant thoughts.

“Cullen,” she repeated when he did not answer, and her fingertips were ships sailing on his skin, slowly drifting through dappled moonlight.

He opened his eyes, and turned his head to find her gazing up at him affectionately. His arm tightened around her waist, and he pulled her impossibly closer. Her figure molded against his perfectly, and she tucked her chin against the curve of his shoulder.

“I love you,” she whispered against his neck, her breath disturbing small hairs that tickled his face. And in that instant he knew that she was real, because his dreams were never kind enough to have her loving him.

She had returned.  _Oh, Maker_ , she had come back to him.

Maeve had pressed the coin into his palm and her lips against his, because she always kept her promises.

He pulled his arm out from beneath her head, rolling onto his side so he could look down at her. Propped up on his elbow, he pushed stray locks of hair, vibrant red even in the moonlight, behind her ear. He traced a line from the shell of her ear, across her jaw to her chin.

He kissed her instead of repeating the words, and that was enough. This time when their lips met she tasted like what he would imagine happiness to taste like.

He broke the seal of their mouths with a shuddering inhale, pressing his forehead against hers as they caught their breath, eyes falling closed as he continued to gently stroke her cheek.

“The moon is bright tonight,” Maeve remarked thoughtfully, tucking one arm beneath her head and nuzzling her face against his hand.

Cullen’s gaze drifted upwards, momentarily, towards the object in question. Full and bright, and washing the room in soft light through the missing ceiling of his room. “Does it bother you?” he asked, returning his sights to her. He shifted his positioning so they were both laying down now, staring at each other in the moonlight.  “All those stars watching?”

“Let them watch,” she replied, confidently, and when she smiled this time, it was real, and Cullen chuckled softly before kissing her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maeve belongs to klc-journei on Tumblr  
> Inspiration: Eavesdrop by the Civil Wars


	2. Too Few and Far Between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knight-Captain Rylen is in love with the Inquisitor's best healer, and being posted at Griffon Wing Keep means he does not get to see her as much as he would like.

He was running out of ways to describe how he missed her. He’d utilized all the adjectives, analogies and turns of phrase at his disposal. Countless times he had described the exact dark brown shade of her hair, or the stormy hue of her eyes. Or the scattered constellations of rare, and intermittent freckles across her shoulders. But, it wasn’t as if he was musing all these impassioned speeches aloud to anyone, so he could afford to be a bit repetitive. 

Her hair was a lovely brandy, the color of fallen leaves browned and sleek with the first rain of autumn. How such a tint could play with the light, like peering at the sun through a jar of pine honey. 

He had yet to decide if her eyes were mostly blue or mostly grey. They were the last of the grey ashes on a fire, tossed up on the breeze; they were the blue of sun-bleached forget-me-not petals.

 Knight-Captain Rylen was utterly, and irreversibly smitten. 

He knew it, and the healer knew it. He could tell by the smug sort of way Haylan was looking up at him. All half-smiles with those storm cloud eyes alight with expectation. 

Kissing her was an expectation he was more than happy to oblige. He cared little for how the other men and women of the keep cheered when he pressed his mouth to hers. He only cared for the eager way she responded; the way she curled her arms around his neck as he hugged her closer.  He pulled away when he felt he’d sufficiently left her breathless, a blush had risen on her cheeks and he smiled at the sight of it before pressing another kiss to her forehead. 

“So, tell me, lass,” he began, smoothing his hands down her arms until he could take her hands in his. His thumb drew small circles across her knuckles as he continued. “What brings you all the way to the Hissing Wastes?“ 

Haylan squeezed his hands; clearing her throat as the crimson flare across the bridge of her nose subsided. “Inquisition business,” she replied, trying and failing to sound serious. “We received word that the path across the toxic canyon was close to finished." 

Rylen wrinkled his nose, crinkling the dark tattoos that climbed the side of it. "You came all this way to see a  _bridge?”_ he teased, managing to sound somewhat forlorn. Haylan laughed, and he lifted her fingers to his lips to kiss them, and hide his own playful grin. 

“Not just to see a bridge, obviously,” she explained when her laughter subsided, a soft smile curling at the corner of her mouth. She looked as if she would say more, but she was interrupted by another Templars approach; they were holding something that look mildly important and Rylen frowned.  He kissed her quickly. “I look forward to hearing what you, and Inquisitor Trevelyan think of our marvelous new bridge." 

Another kiss, just for good measure, before he walked off to address matters of the keep. 

They never did talk about the bridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haylan belongs to siriusdraws on Tumblr


	3. New Additions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen and Cash have very different ideas on how many mabari is too many mabari.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight Trespasser Spoilers

“I distinctly remember only having  _one_ mabari when we got married.”

Cullen leaned against the fencing that was separating him from his wife, his handsome features all twisted in an exaggerated effort to recall the moment he was speaking of. He nodded once, before dropping his chin lazily into his hand, and watched as she was pitifully assaulted by another overeager pup.

Cash turned her face to smile up at him. He could tell she was going for something innocent, but the curl at the corner of her lips was more of a smirk and she looked impish at best. “No, I think I remember it differently,” she teased. 

Cullen opened the gate, gently nudging the puppies that stormed the opening with the toe of his boot and they all tumbled over themselves and each other as they tried to back away from Cullen, but also still vie for his attention. They jumped up against his legs and nipped at his fingers. Cullen chuckled at their enthusiasm, but did not indulge the bad behaviors just yet. It was hard not to laugh at them, they were only two months old, and mostly comprised of paws that were as big as dinner plates and constantly tripping them up.

Two of them, one male and one female, were short-haired, with brindle and white coloring. Their heads were almost egg-shaped when viewed from the front as if the top of their skulls were flat. Profiles curved downwards gently from the top of the skull to the tip of their noses, which were black and bent downwards. They had strong jaws, and dark, triangular eyes.

The remaining two, both males, had coats that were russet colored; thick and woolly; as if they were sheep rather than dogs and making them appear twice as large as they actually were. Wrinkled brows hid their bright, almond-shaped eyes leaving nothing but a squared muzzle visible. Cullen could already tell that these brothers would be much bigger than their siblings.

“I’ve almost thought of names for all of them.”

Cash’s voice drew Cullen out of his assessment of the pups, and he turned his gaze to his wife once more. “You…  _what?”_ he asked, immediately sounding somewhat distressed as his rubbed the back of his neck.

“ _Names_ ,” she repeated, reaching out to pull a passing dog into her lap. She immediately flopped it over on to its back so she could rub his belly generously. “Every dog needs a good name.”

Cullen remained silent, eyes averting to the space behind his wife that was occupied by the two adult mabari that they already owned, and were the proud parents of the puppies in question. His hand remained solidly against the back of his neck, the other hanging loosely at his side.

He’d had no idea they were planning on  _keeping_  the puppies.

Eventually, Cullen removed his hand from the back of his neck to extend it to Cash.  She released the hold she had on one of the fluffier dogs, setting him aside to place her hand in Cullen’s and use it to lift herself from the ground.

The reaction of her skin on his was instant, a warmth spread through him that caused him to smile. He knew he would never get over the way she made him feel: l _oved._   He used the grip he had on her hand to pull her against him, he hooked his free hand around her waist, and kissed her before she could react. He brushed his lips across the scar that ran down her nose, immediately after breaking the seal of their mouths. “Perhaps we should see if we can  _manage_ all of them, first,” he offered, but Cash only smiled in return.

⌘ 

Cash was giggling.

She was trying to be quiet about it, but it was hard to ignore the small shakes of her shoulders when he held her so close. “What’s so funny?” he found himself asking, lips moving against the softness of her hair. He knew the answer, because he could hear it, too. The click of tiny claws against the wood flooring, the snuffling sounds they were making as they sniffed at the door. Somehow, she had convinced him that they should bring the puppies in for the night. _Just in case it rains, or something_  she’d explained, and it was hard to ignore the doe-eyed look she had given him.

“Don’t you hear them?” she managed between giggles, and Cullen sighed in response.

When the stampede of clicks passed the door for the third time, Cash threw back the coverlet and bounded out of bed. Cullen grunted, slightly disrupted by her movements, and he propped himself up on his elbow, squinting in the dark to try and she what she was up to.

“Cash,” he started, tentatively, but she had already thrown open the door. She whistled once, and puppies flooded into the room.  

“I think they should all just sleep with us,” she said, matter-of-factly, and he could hear her struggling to pick up a wiggling puppy.

Cullen turned his head to where the larger mabari were already occupying the foot of the bed. “I don’t think there’s room,” he observed. His comments appeared to have fallen on deaf ears, because he felt the bed move as Cash began piling puppies upon it one by one. “I guess we will have to make room,” he muttered, mostly to himself, as the smaller dogs loped and stumbled across the bedding.

Cash slipped back into bed, cooing softly to the dogs to get them all to settle. Cullen waited patiently as she did so, and when everything calmed he reached a hand across the sea of fur until he found his wife’s face in the dark. He cupped her cheek gently, he brushed his thumb across her bottom lip and he could trace the curve of her smile.

“I guess we are going to need a larger bed,” he mumbled, and Cash turned her face to kiss his palm, knowing she had won.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cash belongs to puipuip on Tumblr


	4. Seeing Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An alternate look at In Hushed Whispers, in which Cullen attempted to rescue the Inquisitor.

It was always the pain that woke him.

Not that the times that the pain caused him to lapse into unconsciousness could ever have been called sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he had truly slept. 

His eyes burned, his vision spiraled if he turned his head too quickly and everything looked like he was seeing it from behind red-stained glass. His body ached. There was not room enough to move in the cell, and he’d lost track of the days he’d spent trapped within it. His head was a mess of thoughts and agony.

Lyrium.

Red lyrium.

Too much of one, not enough of the other.

The latter sprung up from the cracked stone flooring in giant veins, pulsating warm and ominous.

It had started growing out of his skin, protruding outwards from his left shoulder blade and continuing in sporadic fragments down his arm.

He deserved this, perhaps. What a fitting end for the poor excuse of a Templar he had been. He cursed, harshly, pressing the back of his head against the stone walls. He cursed the Maker, and he cursed Andraste, and he condemned himself for not being strong enough to save her. For being foolish enough to think that the half-formed plan they had come up with would work.

The sound of steps would have drawn his attention if he’d had any hope left. In the beginning, he’d held on to the notion that it would be her: Maeve, the Inquisitor come to save them all, once again. But each time he was wrong, and each time he lost another piece of himself.

The steps were drawing closer and coming down the stairs. He didn’t bother to try and see who it was. Another Venatori to taunt his failure, probably.

Footfalls halted before his cell.

Then, his name followed by a sharp intake of breath. The sounds of a voice so devastatingly familiar wrapped like a vice around his heart. He turned his head to the speaker, brow furrowed in quick anger, his eyes were only the narrow slits of a glare.

Maeve?

No, not Meave. Never Maeve. Not really, anyway.

“Go away,” he demanded of the apparition. Just another lyrium induced fever dream of the one he had lost. He didn’t know why he tried to talk to them. Desperation, if he’d had mind enough left to guess.

“It’s me,” she insisted, and he watched as she dropped down to one knee, pulling lock-picking pins from the kit on her belt and starting work on the lock. He only chuckled in response, sad and derisive as he turned his head away from her once more.

Maeve made easy work of the lock, and hastily pushed the tools back into their case before swinging open the door and rushing towards him. “Cullen,” she whispered with a relief like she had found something she had lost. “It’s really me. I’m here.”

She placed a hand against his arm and his eye snapped open, their brilliant amber coloring lost to the red glow of the lyrium. He could feel her hand upon him, hot and cold at the same time. Solid, and soft and  _real_. Electric, like a million tiny stars being born and then dying in the space between her fingers and his skin. 

“Maker’s breath,” he sighed. “How is this possible?”

“We’re not quite sure ourselves,” she said, her lips pressing together in her obvious displeasure. “Can you stand?”

“Yes, I think so.”

He pushed himself from the ground with his right hand, and stumbled once, underestimating the weight of the lyrium protruding from his left. He adjusted for the burden, and was able to right himself shortly after. She hovered over him all the while, concerned and protective. 

Maeve and Dorian told him what they’d been able to piece together. Told him of Alexius and his time spell, of his supposed plan. Cullen explained what had happened after the Inquisitor’s disappearance.

“You need to find the others,” Cullen told her, when all the details caught up to the present. “Cassandra, and Haylan. They’re…still here.”

“We will,” Maeve assured, glancing at Dorian who nodded curtly in agreement. “What will you do?”

“I will cut you a path to Alexius.”

“Cullen…” She said nothing else, but he noticed the way her eyes tracked to the lyrium formations that pushed forth from his flesh.

“Find the others,” he repeated, ignoring the concerns that she had not voiced. “Meet me at the throne room.” 

He made sure that his tone brooked no room for arguments.

⌘

And forge a path he did, discovering that even without a shield he was a force to be reckoned with. With nothing at his side but a discarded broadsword and the depth of his anger he cut down any who would oppose him.

He would not be stopped. He would not fail her, again.

When the last of the Venatori guarding the door was felled, he waited, anxiously. Relief flooded over him in waves when she reappeared, her companions following close behind. 

⌘ 

The fight against Alexius was short-lived. He was a man who had lost everything and gained for naught in the wake of his endeavors; he had nothing to fight for. Nothing to live for.

In the end, it was Dorian who pulled the amulet from the lifeless hands of a man he once looked up to.

“Give me an hour to work out the spell he used.” Dorian explained. 

“An  _hour?”_ Cullen interrupted. There was no time for that.  “You must go,  _now!”_

The ethereal screech of the archdemon they’d faced at Haven echoed through the stone halls. They all looked up simultaneously as if they would see the threatening way it circled them like prey. Redcliffe’s Chantry rumbled and shook down to its very foundation.

Cassandra’s gaze cut sideways to Haylan, the corruption of the red lyrium shone in her eyes and through the scars on her face.  The slightest of nods was exchanged between the warrior and the healer. 

“We will go on ahead,” Haylan explained, her voice resonating harmoniously with the slivers of lyrium that clawed at her throat. “Take out as many as we can.”

“Cullen, you are the last line of defense. Let none of them pass.”

“Isn’t there another way?” Maeve pressed. “I will not let you die for me.”

“The only way we live is if this day never comes,” Haylan explained as she and Cassandra began walking away.

“Cast your spell,” the warrior commanded of Dorian, closing the over-sized doors behind her and sealing them off from the first wave of demons.

Maeve had fallen silent, brow furrowed as she watched them leave. She cursed, turning on her heel to ascend the steps and join Dorian on the platform.

“Maeve.” Using her name and grasping hold of her hand the way he did were both uncommon gestures from him. She stopped, surprised, and turned back to look at him, and despite everything that was happening he was overwhelmed by the beauty of her. Even the fray of battle couldn’t take that away from her. When he didn’t respond immediately she drew closer to him, and he felt the skips in his heartbeat.

“What is it?” she asked, curious and urgent.

His pulse pounded in his ears, and his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth, dry and useless. He should tell her, he thought. He had missed his chance before, and he didn’t want to miss it again. 

_I love you._

It was right there, three words caught on the edges of cracked lips that wouldn’t move.

But this was not her future, she did not deserve the weight of his words when she was trying so hard to change the outcome. He didn’t even know if his affection was mutual.

“ _Inquisitor. Please, there’s no time!”_

Dorian’s pleas cut through the din and Cullen was suddenly brought back to himself. He released Maeve’s hand, looking down at his own. Staring down at the shards of red lyrium that had sprung up from his knuckles, as if he couldn’t believe he’d dared to taint her with his touch.

“Go!” he said, instead of all those other things he had been thinking. He bit back his confession and turned away from her, brandishing his sword. “I will give you as much time as I am able.”

He didn’t look back, he only listened as her rapid footsteps took her to where the mage was waiting for her.

Maeve would fix this, he knew she would.

And he would tell her then.  _I love you_  he would say to her, when the time was right.

Either way, he would fight for her. He would protect her to the death, if he had to. He may never have her, but he would have the feeling of her for the rest of his life. For however ever short this one would be.

For however long the one she was going back to. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maeve belongs to klc-journei on Tumblr  
> Haylan belongs to siriusdraws on Tumblr

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration: Eavesdrop by the Civil Wars  
> Maeve belongs to klc-journei on Tumblr


End file.
